


chine

by kosy



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Body Horror Romance, Devotion Tm, F/F, Pre-Season/Series 07, partial nudity but like. it's not sexual. jaylen is just partially a skeleton. you know how it is, post-resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 17:20:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30025173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/kosy
Summary: The furrows of bone blend messily into her flesh, warm brown and sun-freckled and still achingly familiar, even after five years apart.
Relationships: Jaylen Hotdogfingers/Sutton Dreamy
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	chine

**Author's Note:**

> hey all! just some short & sweet body horror today. warning for [checks notes] body horror and also one instance of maincord-prohibited swearing lol. set just after the season six elections. thanks so much for reading!

She's still shaking. 

Not a lot, and she's probably trying to disguise it any way she can, but Sutton notices. God, she can't _not_ notice. Ever since Jaylen came back, Sutton's been watching her out of the corner of her eye. Every fractional movement, every too-intentional breath, every blink. All proof that she's really alive, really _here_. 

But she's still trembling as she pulls off her mudstained jersey with stiff hands, back turned, and Sutton can't stop herself from startling back even though she knew what she'd see.

It’s an expanse of white bone. Some of it bloodied, some of it charred black, some of it pure and bleach-pale. Ribcage into spine into the arch of her hipbone. The furrows of bone blend messily into her flesh, warm brown and sun-freckled and still achingly familiar, even after five years apart.

"Do you have a clean shirt I can wear," Jaylen asks, quiet. Her voice scratches in her half-there throat, and her back is still turned. She hasn't looked at Sutton much in the few hours since she clawed her way out of the churned-up earth of the pitching mound. Keeps her head dropped low. 

The patches of bone show through there too. Grinning teeth, the constant smile of the skull. Temple. Cheekbone. Hinge of her jaw. Sutton's been trying not to stare, but it's impossible not to. It's _Jaylen,_ standing in front of her. Her broad shoulders, her scraped and bloodied forearms, her tangled hair, her ragged seams, her exposed vertebrae. All the familiar lines of her laid bare. 

"Sure," Sutton says, just as soft. It would feel wrong, speaking loudly now. "Yeah, of course, Jay. Just give me a sec." Jaylen nods in silent acknowledgment, and Sutton goes to the dresser and picks out a clean outfit for her. Most of it's Jaylen's already. Things she'd left in Sutton's apartment back in season one. Sutton just couldn't bring herself to get rid of them. It would've felt. Wrong, somehow. So she kept them.

She passes the clothes to her and for a moment after Jaylen turns to take them, she just stares at Sutton, then at the carefully-folded fabric in her hands like she isn't sure what to do with it anymore. "Thanks," she finally mumbles, then shakes her head, what’s left of her bottom lip caught between her teeth before she speaks again. "Sorry, I—God, I'm fucking gross right now, I shouldn't be putting on fresh clothes. I don't..." She just looks exhausted. Dazed. 

Sutton puts her hand over Jaylen's. "Don't worry about it," she tells her quietly. "Look, I don't think showering would be a great idea right now anyway with—" She hesitates. Gestures at the open wound of her body. 

Jaylen nods, wheezing out a half-silent laugh. "Yeah. Probably not." Her skin is feverishly hot where Sutton's fingers rest against it. 

"Tomorrow," Sutton says. "We'll figure it out tomorrow. We can wash your hair in the sink, and—I don't know, use a wet washcloth for your skin." _And bone,_ she thinks but doesn't say. "We'll work it all out then, okay?" 

"Sounds good." Distant look in her eyes—eye. Her eye, singular. Only parts of her face remain. Her right eye is a hollow in the skull, an empty grave. But her other one, the old almost-black brown, is distant, and Sutton doesn't want her distant, she wants her _here,_ so she reaches out on an impulse and spreads her hand out over Jaylen's ribcage. 

Jaylen inhales sharply with lungs she doesn't have, and Sutton nearly flinches away but stops herself just before she does, pressing her palm more firmly into the ridges of cold bone to steady herself instead. "Does it hurt?" she asks, careful. 

She shakes her head. "No." Another gravelly exhale of a laugh. "No. I can't even feel it." 

Silence, for a moment. 

"Oh," she whispers into the dead air, fingers hooked into the spaces between. 

"It's okay," Jaylen says. She's gazing down at Sutton's hand, her expression caught between awe and terror and something Sutton doesn't even have words for, something else entirely. "I mean, I don't. Mind. You can touch me." Her voice wavers there, and for her sake Sutton pretends not to notice. 

"Okay." The word is barely more than a breath. Jaylen's eye is closed now, and Sutton slides her hand up over hard white bone, palm bumping over the divots. Maps out ribs and sternum and collarbone and shoulderblade, then the delicate interlocking jigsaw pieces of the neck. It should be clinical or unnatural, doing this, touching the bones of this living corpse. It isn't. It's so intimate it terrifies her. 

When Sutton cups her jaw in her hands, Jaylen shivers. All the breath shudders out of her. 

"Are you—"

"I'm fine," she cuts her off. "Don't worry about me." 

"Okay," Sutton repeats softly. She strokes her thumb across the side of Jaylen's face. Here she can feel the transitions from bone to warm skin. The torn-up edges of flesh between the two, raw and angry red. Bad patchwork.

She's still shaking. 

Slowly, Sutton leans up and presses a barely-there kiss to the corner of Jaylen's lips, then to the exposed bone of her jaw, then to her cheek, just under her left eye. Hovers there for a moment, lips ghosting over her skin, then lowers herself back down from tiptoes. 

"I'm still here," Sutton murmurs, and Jaylen opens her remaining eye. She looks shattered. The fallout of a person, the remains scavenged from the rubble, burned out and broken open and somehow made anew to stand before her now. She looks like herself, like the woman Sutton loves. She always will. 

"You are," she rasps, quiet, and like this the words sound almost reverent. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! you can find me on tumblr @fourteenthidol where i truly do not shut up about blaseball or Them, and if you want to know more about their whole deal, i'm thrilled to announce i've written [two fics](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2111742) tallying up to around 50k words combined that detail their story from s1-9 and 9-12! thank you again, and if you'd like to leave a comment, it would make my day!


End file.
